Of California and those who settled there, Joan Didion wrote “Here is the last stop for all those who come from somewhere else, for all those who drifted away from the cold and the past and the old ways. Here is where they are trying to find a new life style, trying to find it in the only places they know to look: the movies and the newspapers.”

With big dreams and in times of optimism and promise, whether being lured to the edge of the continent by popular culture - or perhaps counterculture - their aspirations lay in building a good life filled with new opportunities. Was simply embracing life in the sunshine as an Angeleno in itself enough to fulfil the dream? The gable wall murals of LA reflect the artifice of those dreams back to us. Its streetscapes, like the treasured portrait photographs and nostalgic biographies, blend together constructions of both the reality and myth of life in the Golden State.

The 18th century writer and poet, Alexander Pope, spoke of ‘this long disease, my life,’ referring to the many ailments he suffered throughout his life. Then, in the more metaphorical sense, John Gregory Dunne’s memoir added to this idea of the long disease by suggesting not simply that as soon as we are born, we are dying, but also that the melody of life plays as much on the dark keys as the light ones

Happening to type ‘the long disease’ into Google, the extremely long word ‘Pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis’ appears. Both the name of a disease and one of the longest words in the English language, its definition: ‘a lung disease caused by inhaling very fine ash and sand dust’ resonates with Los Angeles as a place where the shadows of its sunshine fall long and desperate.

Inhaling their last breath of the very fine ash and sand dust of LA, these Angels have finally made it into the newspaper.

In any myth, there are elements of truth.

This work was inspired by reading and collecting obituaries from the LA Times, which I began doing sometime around 2012. I became fascinated, not by how people died, but by the lives they lived. I focused on people who had lived a long life and a story to tell, having moved to California from elsewhere in search of a new life in a new land of opportunity.

It eventually became a hardback book and was exhibited in a solo exhibition in RHA Ashford Gallery, delayed until galleries re-opened after Covid in 2021. You can see images from that exhibition here. Some pages from the book can be reviewed here.

Below, some streetscape images are presented with portrait photographs gleaned from the obituary columns. The life stories are included in the book.